Major Announcement - Seymour, IN

(No YouTube link this time around, just text. Those with short attention spans and/or a busy workday can find the "too long; didn't read" version of this below.)

In the course of our travels, we have outrun a tornado in Alabama, accidentally done some off-road driving in Maine, dodged floodwater in Missouri, and waited out a blizzard in Wyoming. We have driven while barely awake in the dead of night. Last week - on December 5th - we woke up in Truth Or Consequences, New Mexico, ready to visit Albuquerque and Santa Fe before making our way to Colorado.

We never made it.

On our way north, we encountered freezing rain, followed by sleet. The car we have is a Mazda 6. She's great for fuel economy, rated one of the safest cars out there, and is in such good shape that when we got the oil changed in Seattle the fellow at the garage asked what we were doing right. However, at the end of the day, our car is still a four-door sedan. It is not equipped for brutal weather, and even in extreme winds can buckle from side to side. As we sat at lunch, watching an apocalyptic weather forecast covering most of the Midwest, Alexa and I reached a mutual decision.

The trip is being put on hold until springtime. We will continue to post entries on the blog and photo albums on Facebook, but the traveling segment is on temporary hiatus. (I cannot stress enough the word temporary here.)

In terms of the grand scheme of our trip, this was not an easy decision. As it stands now, we have 4.5 states left: the northern half of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Aside from Hawaii and Alaska, we have literally seen everything else. We were so close that we were projecting a completion date of around my birthday (January 11th). However, in terms of our personal safety, the safety of our vehicle, and the safety of what little we have with us on the road, this was a no-brainer.

Since then, we made our way across Texas, visiting San Antonio and Houston, before venturing north. For the time being, we are visiting my family in Seymour, Indiana, where we will be through Christmas. After the New Year, we will resume blogging and posting photos, while also preparing a manuscript version of American Weirdness for publication and getting caught up on other projects.

I know I can speak for both of us when I say thank you - the readers - for your continued interest in this project. It has changed shape in the nine months we spent on the road, morphing from a travelogue with dining reviews to an almost anthropological glimpse at American society. Despite this, our readership hasn't just remained constant. It has increased. Whatever it is we are doing, we are clearly doing it right.

I also want to extend our sincerest of thanks to all of our nearest and dearest who have offered us food, a free place to stay, local recommendations, or even just a hang-out during our travels:

Jenn and Jay in Charleston

Joe in Knoxville

Vickie, Travis, and Scott in Atlanta

Stefania in Auburn

Danielle in St. Petersburg

Lewis for recommending stops in Delaware and Cape May, NJ

Briana and Dave in NYC

Tom and Lisa in Brooklyn

Jim in Newport

David and the kids in Scranton

John and Lu in Buffalo

Venkat and Parampara Das in New Vrindaban

Mark and Jeanne in Nashville

Phil and Ann in Madisonville

Nancy, Dudley, and Andy in Louisville

Joyce and Eric in Seymour

Kat in Indianapolis

Carrie in Columbus

Lori and family in Fort Wayne

Harleen in Ann Arbor

Eric and Ann in Detroit

Surendra in Lansing

Jonas in Minneapolis

Amanda, Amanda, and Daniel in Milwaukee

Mike in Vermilion

Art Barrow

Katie, David, and Joe in Seattle

Michael in Portland

Dan, Beulah, and Daniel in Corvallis

Emily in Salt Lake City

Winty in Sacramento

Kevin in Los Angeles

Josh and Amber in Florence

Deepak in San Antonio

Monica in Houston

Whether you offered us a bed, a meal, or even just tea, it meant the world to us.

This will be our last post for 2013, but this is only the beginning. Life on the road for any stretch of time, let alone nine solid months, is both fun and grueling. (Contrary to what our only naysayer might think, to call this a year-long vacation is callous, insensitive, and just plain stupid.) We're ready for time off from it, but at the same time I am happy to say that the last thing we want a break from is one another. Last week, my dad quipped that at this point Alexa and I could renovate a house and/or build one from scratch. And, as we told Tom and Lisa in Brooklyn, we are so close as a couple that we finish each other's sandwiches. It's a little scary.

We will see you in 2014.

Until then, Merry Whatever, Happy Who Cares, and use this time to reflect on the past and look towards the future.

Peace,

Alex

tl;dr - bad weather, tired, taking winter off to get caught up, resuming travels in the spring; see you in January.

The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing: The World's Largest Cross, Effingham, IL

Alongside Interstate 70 in southern Illinois is a massive cross – 198 feet tall, to be exact –made out of aluminum siding. Do I even have to write this one to convey to you our shared thoughts on it?

Imagine a world where a religion adopted a method of execution as their central symbol: a noose, a guillotine, a lead pipe in the billiard room…now imagine that symbol stamped all across the United States. The cross, too, at least historically, was the device for one of the most popular execution methods of its era: crucifixion. There are crosses everywhere in this country. In regions with higher concentrations of Baptists, it is usually a trio of crosses. Roadside are makeshift memorials to loved ones who died in automobile accidents, marked by crosses. And yet, there is never a roadside assemblage of crescent moons and stars, six-pointed stars, the Sanskrit depiction of “Om,” Buddha’s wheel of dharma…

For those who don't know - and want to - the Christian Cross, Jewish Star of David, Hindu Om, the Star and Crescent of Islam, the Buddhist Dharmic wheel, the Shinto Torii, the Sikh Khanda, the Baha'i Star, and the Jain Hand.

Image credit: Wikimedia.

Now is as good a time as ever to restate that I find nothing wrong with the core precepts of Christianity. Whatever belief system helps you become a better person without being a self-righteous ass about it, I say go for it. My dad is a good Christian. My grandparents are good Christians. There are plenty of good Christians the world over. This isn’t for them or even about them – and with that, I hope more Christians stand up for themselves and the true messages within their religion, of love, acceptance, and service to mankind, not just as an affront to the clinically insane claimants of the faith, but also to reshape popular perception.

Theological conundrums aside, and I assure you the book will have a much meatier take on the subject, the important question I have asked as we traveled across the United States is this: “What about non-Christians?” What about non-Christians who wish to buy alcohol on a Sunday in any number of states? What about non-Christians who see a billboard telling them evolution is a lie, and to call 1-855-FOR-TRUTH to hear the real story? What about those pro-life billboards?

Not even the worst.

Image credit: Plunderbund via Gender Focus.

For people living on either coast, this may seem baffling, but it is a reality throughout the Midwest and the South. (That said, I would love to know the rates of teen pregnancies in regions with those awful “LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION” billboards.) If this was a phenomenon limited to a single state, it would not be as bad. It would be a problem as easily resolved as my version of censorship: if you do not like it, turn it off! If you don’t care to see these messages, avoid the one state that has them. Unfortunately, this presentation of a warped, distorted Christianity that is anti-gay, ferociously anti-abortion, and anti-science, whatever the numbers actually are for practitioners and church memberships, is loud, proud, and preachy.

People are entitled by the Bill of Rights, their own free will, and some level of divine inspiration to pursue and practice the belief system of their choice. Where I draw the line is when one narrow school of thought is considered superior, influencing not just popular culture, but public policy. My gripe is with how in-your-face certain types of Christians can be. For the most egregious example of this, look no further than the Effingham Cross.

Interstate 70 serves as a major route for transportation from Baltimore to Utah, spanning just over 2,150 miles. Anyone who has passed through Illinois on this road has seen it, almost popping up out of nowhere: a giant cross, illuminated by a circle of spotlights on the ground. A close inspection reveals it is covered with aluminum siding, looking more like the weekend project of a crazed Home Depot employee than an earnest testament of faith.

No idols...no graven images...but a cross that towers over the nearest grain silo? Totally okay.

At the cross’ base is a relatively new church facility. Its sanctuary has at its front a wall of glass, granting visitors a view of the enormous cross and the relaxing vista of four lanes of constant Interstate traffic. Staffed by elderly volunteers, the church also offers a ten-minute video detailing the construction and installation of the cross. For reasons that I do not understand, both the video and their literature makes a big deal out of the fact that the cross was completed and put in place in the weeks after 9/11.

Alexa Altman: 5 foot 4 inches of fierce.

I was also left with a bad taste in my mouth when I learned the designer deliberately planned for the cross to stand 198 feet tall. What sounds like an arbitrary number is in fact two feet less than the minimum height listed in an FAA regulation requiring a blinking red light on top. Something about that struck me as so unnecessarily defiant, as if a cross twenty-four inches taller would somehow be cheapened by a blinking red light in compliance with federal law.

It was (literally) a hundred degrees out, with that Midwestern humidity to boot. I promised Alexa a cake pop to stay there while I walked back far enough to get the entire cross in the frame. 

The worst thing about this incredibly well-lit monstrosity is in knowing the resources invested into it, the time, money*, and manpower that could have built a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen, or a Boys & Girls Club. Jesus was a champion for the weak, for those in need, and for children. My Biblical knowledge is rusty, I’ll admit, but I definitely do not remember him insisting his followers build a cult of personality around praising him, much less to construct a replica of the device used in his brutal public execution.

Jesus' execution, as depicted in a film that parents who otherwise protest violence in cinema took their children along to see.

Christianity is not the only religion in our cultural landscape, and with increased globalization, its numbers will continue to drop so as to make room for different belief systems and philosophies. This does not mean it is going away – and I would not want that to happen– but instead that other ideas will enter our cultural lexicon. After all, is America not the land that, even today, boasts room for all? Or did that go away along with habeas corpus and payphones?

The Effingham Cross would be less obnoxious if, along that same stretch of road, there were massive replicas of the symbols of every major world religion. But then again, it would not be too long before Muslim extremists would attempt to blow up the Star of David, Zionist war-hawks would build a barbed-wire fence around the Star and Crescent after vandalizing it, while the Baha’is would wonder aloud why we all just can’t get along.

Then again, religion is a subject much like sex. A private and deeply personal matter, it is best discussed in small groups, where experiences and pursuits can be discussed in a climate of respect and understanding, with an unwritten law in effect that those who talk the most frequently, the most publicly, and the loudest about it are the ones who are getting the least enjoyment from it.

Credit: Photobucket. 

*Actual retail price: $1,000,000.00. It wouldn’t exactly be the Ritz-Carlton, but that could build a homeless shelter or seven.

Tumbling Dice: French Lick Casino & Resort, Indiana

Neither of us are the ideal people to write about casinos. We hate them. Alexa and I both think casinos do nothing but attract the sleaziest elements, separating the gullible from their money to the point of addiction while at the same time heralding the culture of conspicuous consumption for America’s jet-set. This one won’t be pretty.

I grew up in Seymour, Indiana. It is the “small town” that John Mellencamp, the poor man’s Springsteen, rhapsodized about, but only after he had made his first million and gotten the Hell out. For many locals, this is still a sore subject – he abandoned his flock, he got too big for the “little people,” he forgot his roots…by moving to Bloomington. Bloomington – the hip, liberal college town, the only spot in Indiana that doesn’t deserve a napalm strike. For moving two counties over, just 50 miles away, the man is a sell-out, a Judas.

If I were him, I would have thought that even Bloomington was too close to that depressing track-mark, the land where religious diversity means Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians are breaking bread over the same buffet of casseroles and mayonnaise-based “salads.” It is a land that offers nothing but complacency, conformism, and being criticized in the rare case that you are even just a little different. I was happy to leave and have never looked back, not even missing Bloomington but for those fleeting moments of dumb nostalgia – yearning for an idealized past that never really existed, but one still envisions “those days” as being uncomplicated – and finally reminding myself that even Bloomington is only so much limestone and mortar.

Beginning with my adolescence, I knew Indiana was a state with no future. What a bleak thing to think, but only those who have seen it firsthand, with the right kind of eyes, will know what I mean.

I am singling Indiana out here, but the same can be said for a bulk of the Midwest. It has no future.

“Look at all the people,

Well they all look the same,

They’re going to the factories,

In their cloth caps and trilbies.”

- The Kinks, “Scrapheap City”

It is all about homogeneity. The sameness. The same houses. The same American-made trucks. The same haircuts. The same religious, political, and social views. And it has been meticulously crafted by the powers that be – all them liberal queer-lovers can stay out on the East Coast, or in California, because the Midwest has no place for them here. Putting a boot in one’s ass, according to popular lore, is the American way.

Fuck that song.

Perhaps more tragic than having no future is when a place has no idea what – if anything – to do with its past. Again, this is not just Indiana I am talking about. In fact, I’ll begin with an example from Indiana’s somehow even more depressing neighbor, Ohio. When we visited a friend in Columbus, she recounted to us that the birthplace of Rutherford B. Hayes and the first-ever Wendy’s had both been bulldozed. A White Castle now sits atop the latter.

I have talked a lot in my writings about my grandfather and his influence on me – loving history, my infatuation with the early days of the space program, leaving room for nature – but now is as good a time as any to mention his son, my dad, and what he brought to my upbringing. Besides music and movies, Dad has a love of architecture. Anything from the Victorian era up through Art Deco is right up his alley – he helped save a historic home near the Freeman Field airport from demolition – and he even lives in a house constructed in the mission-style, from 1912. This is something he has imparted onto all three of his kids. My older brother even considered architecture when he started college.

Way back when our family just had the one computer, Dad had as the desktop background a picture of the famous resort in West Baden, with its massive domed atrium. Dad told me all about it, and that one day, “when they finally get around to restoring it,” we would see it. West Baden shares a municipal border with French Lick, the unfortunately named hometown of Larry Bird. French Lick is also home to another famous old resort hotel, known for its sulfur-scented hot springs. Because the water induced diarrhea or something, it was bottled and sold for its curative properties as Pluto Water – “if nature can’t do it, Pluto will!”

The location of the resort may seem like a bit of a head-scratcher, smack in the middle of south-west central Indiana, but it was its proximity to Chicago along Highway 41 (just far enough to be a getaway) that made it a favorite place for businesspeople, gangsters, and film stars.

Long story short, the place fell in and out of disrepair (along with the West Baden Springs Hotel, which for a period became a Jesuit seminary), changing ownership every few years with loads of empty promises about restoring the place to its former glory. When I visited French Lick with my family in 2004, we actually stayed at the famed hotel. The lobby was in great shape, but the corridors and rooms definitely had a Shining feel to it. Maybe it had something to do with Indiana being a depressing shade of grey from November through April, but it had its share of charm. At the time, the West Baden Springs only offered tours of its grand lobby, with the scuttlebutt of the time being that Donald Trump had plans to revitalize both French Lick and West Baden.

Within a year, that rotten, racist son of a bitch had pulled out for “various reasons.” Instead, the Cook Company from Bloomington pledged their money, and by the time I left Indiana for good in 2009, French Lick’s grand hotel had become a resort and casino once again, with West Baden soon to follow.( Of course, some laws had to be rewritten so as to allow for the legalization of gambling first, but given the millions granted to the hotels, I’m sure a check or two made its way to Indianapolis.)

In our travels, and even when we still lived in New York City, the oft-proposed solution to money woes for a given town that inevitably floats to the surface like a turd in a swimming pool is, “I know! Let’s build a casino!” And the town is never the same. We have seen it everywhere there is a casino – panhandlers begging for money for a bus ticket, a gallon of gas, a phone call, that one last drink, plus that overall grimy and vulnerable feeling one gets upon realizing that they kissed personal safety goodbye twenty minutes ago – but that has not stopped local lawmakers from buying into the great lie that casinos create jobs and stimulate the economy.

The French Lick Springs Hotel, now dubbed The French Lick Resort Casino, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and has been dubbed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the Historic Hotels of America. These coveted distinctions were not enough to keep an entirely new wing from being added on to the original building, with the pressurized air from the connecting hallway blasting down the corridor.

That lobby I praised? Gone. It has been gutted out, renovated to look like an ugly modern hotel. A plastic bimbo hawking seats for a timeshare presentation in Group Meeting Room C was offering free cookies. Looking around at the clientele, she probably also should have been offering insulin shots. None of the original charm was intact – people addicted to penny slots don’t give a splatter of vomit about interior design, they just want to win big. But hey, at least they kept the tile floor.

Sitting on the large covered porch – another feature I was shocked to see left intact – were affluent vacationers, all reading the same shitty inspirational Christian fiction, looking like they just strutted out of a Ralph Lauren catalog. The men all play golf and the women treat themselves to oily rubdowns in the spa. A hundred years ago, they would have played croquet at lawn parties, sipping lemonade, advocating for temperance, and deriding gambling as the devil’s game. Now they sit above it – both architecturally and metaphorically – while the same groveling minions they slowly work to death during the week blow their wages below.

Throughout the historic hotel are signs indicating that no smoking is allowed. Hell, you now can’t even smoke within thirty feet of the entrance – but those rules don’t apply in the casino. The moment you cross over into the new addition, there is a faint aroma of tobacco smoke. At the escalators, the aroma becomes first a smell, then a full-blown stench, as you descend into the abyss. After you get past security, you are surrounded by winos, seniors connected to oxygen tanks, obese vacationers, and even more obese people who use motorized carts to get from one machine to the next.

You are inside the belly of a windowless, charmless, monitored-from-all-angles beast. All around you are blinking lights, loud synthesized notes as the tumblers spin inside the slot machines, and every few minutes an artificial bell ringing because someone just won three bucks on a nickel game. No machine makes any noises when you lose, and why should it? Keep the customers happy; anyone from our generation who played them can remember the crushing agony of the countdown after getting a game over at the arcade.

Maybe it is a bit cruel to make this observation, but I have already conceded my faith in Jesus as the son of God, so by these people’s standards, I’m already going to Hell: Alexa and I noticed that the people playing the machines were, in some part, machines themselves. Some of them need a mechanized apparatus to breathe. Others needed a machine to get around. Others still, while having nothing obviously wrong with them externally, pumped in change and pulled levers like they were automated, occasionally taking a drag off of their Marlboros.

This whole notion of machines playing with machines was compounded when we saw the serious players who weren’t using cups o’ change. That is for the amateurs, apparently. No, these high rollers had little cards with their name, rank, and gambling habits go into the machines – and just how many of these people are frightened of the Affordable Care Act? – which all of the players had attached to their wrists. It was like a little umbilical cord, connecting them to the machine that is the opposite of a womb: it depletes their money, rarely providing anything beyond sensory overload, and ultimately only brings them closer to the inevitable.

We left, horrified and disgusted. 

Whiskey River: Maker's Mark Distillery, Loretto, KY

Though it is not without its problems - like the lady we saw pumping gas, holding her baby, and managing a cigarette all at the same time - Kentucky is home to dozens of whisky distilleries. You can smell the rye drifting through the air for miles. It’s fucking beautiful.

As a whisky drinker, I found myself in a lush's Shangri-La when I realized we had unknowingly shacked up for a few days in the Bourbon Capital of the world, using Bardstown as our home base. We researched tours and, with some help from Alex's grandparents, settled on the Maker’s Mark distillery. They still hand make the product and haven’t gone all corporate like some other brands, collaborating with shit-food chain restaurants to create a syrupy sauce to pour over a hunk of all-purpose beef. In fact, they have their own chain of restaurants.

Descendants of the original Maker’s Mark family still live on the property where the whisky is made, bottled, and distributed. Tours are affordable at $7 per person, and the best part is most people usually don’t bring their little kids. Good parents, at least. There’s always that one family who thought a whisky distillery would make for an appropriate family outing and just think it is so cute when their dumb little angel decides to tell the docent that they love Batman.

They led us through the sweltering-hot room where the product ferments and turns from an oatmeal-like substance into actual, drinkable whisky. Our guide let everyone dip their fingers into the enormous wooden vats to taste the product at it’s three stages. I’m not a germaphobe but I know what people do with their hands. She assured us it was safe, and we all stuck our fingers (some used their whole hands) into the tub of boiling slop. It tasted like cheap, stale beer. Each vat was more potent than the last, and eventually, you could taste the whisky.

The bubbling brew.

She showed us to the packaging and distribution center, where workers in hairnets slapped on labels and dipped thousands of bottles in red wax, the product’s signature. They clattered by on a conveyor belt, the wax dripping down the neck on its way to shipping.

At the end of the tour, our guide led us to the tasting chamber, where we sampled four different versions of Maker’s Mark, including the top shelf one that I know I’ll never be able to afford. We finished our samples and stumbled, as always, into the gift shop. We didn’t buy anything, but then again, we never do.

We aren’t drinking much on the road, save for special occasions and when we visit friends. For the moment, it has been deemed an unnecessary expense, which it is. When we finally are back to earning paychecks, I’m going to buy a bottle of Maker’s Mark, pretend it’s one I saw rattling by on the conveyor belt at the factory, and pour myself a whisky and ginger ale.

Southern Man: The Jefferson Davis Memorial, Pembroke, KY

Alex’s grandparents live in Madisonville, Kentucky, a modest grid of 18th century buildings housing under-visited businesses and strips of teeming fast-food restaurants. Papa, a former anesthesiologist with the Air Force, and Gramma, the sweetest, most honest woman alive,  live in a 60s split-level brick home a mile from the center of town. We spent a weekend with them on our way from Memphis to Indiana in the middle of the summer. Gramma fed us eight-layer bars and Papa told us stories about his parents, friends from the service, and even one about the time Alex stayed with them for a weekend and refused to pick up his toys.

In the morning, we drove 45 minutes south to Pembroke, Kentucky, a hamlet even smaller than Madisonville, to see the Jefferson Davis memorial. A 351-foot obelisk of pure Kentucky limestone stands among a brood of spindling trees on the same land where the Confederacy’s biggest hope was born. We rode the elevator to the top, a narrow platform with barred windows and views of the emerald Kentucky countryside.

Papa

Just a few hundred miles to the East, in a similar patch of Kentucky sawmill grass, is where Abraham Lincoln was born.

A couple joined us to the top and then down to the base. Papa talked with the man, wearing a tanned, chocolate brown cowboy hat and silver belt buckle. His wife, a spirited, stout woman, whose few remaining teeth matched her husband’s hat, told us they were Civil War re-enactors and first-rate historians.

“We wear the traditional hoop skirts and everything,” said said in a stilted twang. “Some of those dresses cost nearly $500!”

Their authentic rifles cost nearly three times that amount, and thousands of proud Kentuckians come every year to watch the South rise and fall again.

As she waddled alongside us, she said her teenaged daughter had just gotten in trouble in school for “correcting the teacher” while discussing the Civil War. The historian thought it important we know the teacher was black.

Like fracking, abortion, and whether or not our president is really an American, the Civil War remains an issue that divides this country nearly 150 years later. There are legions of disappointed, disheartened people, embarrassed about the day Lee folded and determined that antebellum will rule once more. Like the historians, they claim it has more to do with land and pride than race or slavery, but everything in this country is always about race and slavery.

In reality, Davis was a reluctant hero, disinclined to secede, and possessed little desire to be president over the Confederate nation were they to win. The puppet in president’s clothing, and when the South crumbled, the one to blame.

We walked through the small museum in the building next to the monument, detailing Jefferson’s life, beginning with his Kentucky roots and upbringing in Louisiana and Mississippi, moving through his marriages, and on to his military career. It displayed cases of his letters, photographs of his family, and the side of him lost under scrutiny and opposition. Jefferson Davis was the brain child behind public services we still employ today, including ensuring veterans receive compensation after their service. It was his idea to construct the nation’s capital, but it doesn’t matter. Most people will always, and only, remember him as the guy who let down the South.

Baby, Let's Play House: Graceland, Memphis, TN

We arrived at Graceland late-morning, high time for Memphis’ signature lung-swaddling heat. Coping with the temperature, as hundreds of thousands do annually, is the first step of the pilgrimage to see where The King lived and died. For fans, it is worth it, granted you can stomach the ornery tourists and copious, blatant merchandising.

It’s like Disneyworld, except Mickey Mouse is Elvis.

Attendants corralled us into queues, handed us headsets and placed us on a tiny bus, which travelled approximately a quarter of a mile, just across the boulevard, past the iconic music-staff gate and up the long driveway, through the front yard and up to the front of the house. Tours depart approximately every ten minutes — a failed system as the average tourist could spend more than ten minutes photographing the azalea bushes by the veranda. It only takes the first tour of the morning to back up tours for the remainder of the day, leaving guests jousting their way through a human barricade to photograph the baby grand piano in the music room.

“Please try to keep moving,” a docent urges. Nobody moves.

The home is modest in size and outrageous in decor. It’s the Versailles of the 60's. No color of the wheel or yard of faux animal fur were spared. If it could be edged in gold, it was, and nothing has changed since the day the music died. Like Alex said after our trip to Tupelo, Elvis' primary decorative motif was "hillbillies who won the lottery, and what they think rich people live like."

Every artifact remains exactly in place, the same feeling you get being in someone's home after a funeral — any minute they could walk in and pick up just the same. That, or there should at least be a spread of cold cuts, potato salad, and baked goods. The portraits of Priscilla and Lisa Marie in their “pre-plastic” years smile from every wall. (It was somewhere on this tour that Alex also pointed out that I look like I could be Elvis and Priscilla's kid - but seeing as Elvis died 12 years before I hatched, I'll just stick to pretending my dad is John Fogerty.) The piano stool where Elvis sat to play “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” stands before the glossy instrument. The built-in waterfall in the jungle room still trickles, surrounded by tiki upholstery and emerald ferns. The bar is fully stocked, the pool balls racked, the kitchen clean.

Guests aren’t allowed anywhere near the bathroom where Elvis died. They aren’t even allowed upstairs.

As we descended to the basement down a narrow staircase, both arteries leading into and exiting the basement clogged. The woman directing traffic from the TV room heaved gruffly and called to her coworker upstairs.

“We’re completely jammed down here!” Distressed as though she was the first to spot the iceberg from the Titanic...or at least managing who got onto what lifeboat.

It took twenty minutes of prodding and moaning for traffic to resume again, the entire time people continued to lunge for photos of the sofa where Elvis used to sit and watch his three televisions at the same time.

Pretty sure that's a bullet hole in the slide on Lisa Marie's play set.

The tour wound back upstairs and outside, across the backyard and into a hall filled with Elvis’ gold and platinum records, trophies, and the wood-box television set his record label gave him after he sold his first million records. His hall of fame.

The procession emptied outside again, this time into the meditation garden where The King, along with his parents, stillborn twin brother, and grandmother, are buried. The cavalcade halted to photograph the graves. Some looked visibly distressed behind their sunglasses and point-and-shoot Nikons. Some placed notes and flowers on the five graves, mouthing a little prayer. Paul McCartney reportedly left a guitar pick on Elvis’ grave when he visited earlier this year, so The King could play in heaven.

Back across the street are museums housing his cars, airplanes, and outlandish wardrobe, plus roughly twenty gift shops selling every Elvis knickknack you can imagine — license plate frames, sunglasses, travel coffee tumblers with The King’s signature “TCB” (which stands for Taking Care of Business) in pink glitter. Every museum has it’s own gift shop and some of the gift shops have museums inside them.

There’s no hiding what Graceland is: a moneymaker. When the Presley estate began to dwindle, Lisa Marie was expected to inherit only $1 million. It’s a way to ensure the Elvis legacy lives on, both monetarily and spiritually. One of the great American icons whose life you can briefly step into for a small fee, to pay your respects, and remember The King.

My Sweet Lord: New Vrindaban, WV

Every time I breach the subject of our religious beliefs – as I did in the post on the Meher Spiritual Center in Myrtle Beach – whether in conversation or in writing, I am always quick to say it is a personal matter. Not anymore. In terms of religious thought, I find the most clarity in the philosophies, teachings, scriptures, and sages of the Hindu faith. I am a Hindu, though some may argue that given that I am not Indian (at least not in this lifetime) that I am a practitioner of Sanatana Dharma, which translates as “the Eternal Law.”

Whatever. Labels are stupid.

In a similar vein as my discovery of Meher Baba by way of Pete Townshend, my first glimpse into Hinduism – albeit a very specific denomination of the faith – came through George Harrison and his involvement with the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. They are also commonly referred to as the Hare Krishna movement. One Christmas my grandparents gave me a massive coffee-table book called The Beatles: A Celebration by Geoffrey Giuliano. (Giuliano himself has had a long relationship with ISKCON, as well.)

Throughout were full-color photographs of The Beatles, their cohorts, consorts, rare picture sleeves, and all manner of Beatles ephemera. The chapter discussing each Beatle’s solo pursuits included a photo of George, his wife Patti, and two bald men in yellow/orange colored robes. (Back then I only conceived of colors as defined by Crayola – 16 years later, I now know that color to be saffron.)

Swami Prabhupada, Patti Harrison, George Harrison, and Dhananjaya Das, circa 1974.

I remember, even back then, thinking the man on the left – despite being the shortest person in the photo – had quite a unique presence about him. (This is saying something, because back in 1997 there was nothing I wanted more than to be a Beatle.) I also remember his name looking like a smattering of letters that I thought I would never be able to pronounce: His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.

Swami Prabhupada was the founder of ISKCON, and much like Meher Baba, Swami Vivekananda, and Swami Sivananda, I have found nothing – NOTHING – in the way of a juicy postmortem confessional from disillusioned former students, nothing indicating he had a secret stash of Rolls Royces, no sordid private life, no sharply-worded critiques of other religions made in secret, no secret agenda to establish a one-world religion, and no racist newsletters published under his letterhead. (These are all misdeeds attributed to various 20th Century spiritual leaders…except that last one. That one was Ron Paul.) In short, the man truly was, to use a cliché turn of phrase, the real deal.*

In the latter 20th Century, Swami Prabhupada introduced Hinduism to the Love Generation, arriving in the United States in 1966. His message was simple: Krishna – an avatar of the god Vishnu – is the Supreme Godhead, and the chanting of his name will bring about a legion of good. For strict adherents, there is a code of morals and ethics, but taking up the chanting of the Hare Krishna mantra** was offered as a simple practice for anyone and everyone. The only other prescription Prabhupada had for the general public was to give up eating meat.

Nestled away in the Appalachians, just south of Wheeling, West Virginia (the birthplace of my maternal grandfather, Charles Rowan) is a community of 350 ISKCON devotees called New Vrindaban. (Old Vrindaban is in Uttar Pradesh, India, the boyhood home of Krishna.) The community has an ornate temple, a farm where cows are protected and venerated, a larger-than-life statue of Lord Caitanya (the 16th Century propagator of the Hare Krishna mantra), living quarters for guests, and what was intended to be Prabhupada’s home during his visits to America. Unfortunately, Prabhupada died before the latter’s completion.

Our visit was brief, but most memorable. Visiting the temple in the early evening, a monk named Venkat introduced us to each of the deities. We talked about our familiarity both with Hinduism and my knowledge of ISKCON via George Harrison. Unlike the folks at the Baba center with Pete Townshend, Venkat was very familiar with George’s connection to ISKCON. (In all fairness, Townshend distanced himself from Baba’s organization due to his drug problems in the early 1980’s.) George had been a benefactor for ISKCON in England, producing first a single and then an entire album ofdevotional music, and he remained a lifelong devotee.

During the evening worship service, the chief monk, Parampara Das, tapped us on the shoulder and took us to his office, where we chatted at great length about society, religion, and God. It is too much for me to go into details here – for more, you’ll have to wait until American Weirdness becomes a full-on book – but it was refreshing and a sheer delight to hear from someone with a level of spiritual authority things I have said, thought, and written about these topics. We were offered the warmest of welcomes by the devotees and other visitors alike. (There was a large group of Indians with Ontario license plates visiting that same weekend.)

The following morning began for us at five, with worship beginning before dawn. After worship – which included prayers and obeisance to Krishna, Narasimha (another avatar of Vishnu in the form of a half-man, half-lion), and Prabhupada – Parampara Das gave a humorous but instructional talk on using prayer beads to count the Hare Krishna mantra, which is ideally chanted 108 times in one sitting. (If it sounds nuts, consider that it only takes about 12 to 15 minutes.)

After lunch and midday services, we left for Charleston, the state capital. Our visit was too brief, and yet we both had very transformative experiences at New Vrindaban. We were invigorated, spiritually awakened, and at peace.

* For any wayward Westerners seeking sources of enlightenment from the East, I strongly encourage you to do your homework on the authors! Some of them are legitimate men and women of God, sharing, reiterating, and spreading a strong message for no purpose other than the betterment of the species. Many, however, are hucksters who prey upon the Western exoticizing of all things from the “Mysterious East.” Their messages carry the depth of a Hallmark greeting card, which they peddle at an exorbitant rate, with a personal life that would make Caligula blush. Back in Massachusetts, I picked up a book on meditation by a “Swami” who I later learned was accused of rape by several former students. Since I don’t believe in burning books, at the next possible juncture, I traded it in at a bookstore in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, in exchange for a book of Shakti prayers, hymns, and poems.

** The Hare Krishna mantra is remarkably simple to remember:

“Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna,

Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare,

Hare Rama, Hare Rama,

Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare”

Here is the George Harrison-produced recording of the Hare Krishna mantra, as performed by the devotees of the Radha Krishna Temple in England.